LEFT: Ronni Moffitt, who was a development associate at the Institute for Policy Studies at the time of her death in the 1976 car bombing. (Family photo) MIDDLE: Isabel Letelier, right, and Michael Moffitt embrace after placing roses at the site where Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were killed in 1976. (UPI) RIGHT: Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the U.S., is pictured in April 1975. (Associated Press/AS)

Washington Post: This Was Not an Accident. This Was a Bomb

On a muggy autumn morning four decades ago, a car exploded in Washington. It had motored along Massachusetts Avenue NW, rounding the bend at Sheridan Circle, when a remote-controlled bomb taped beneath the vehicle was triggered.

A driver in a car nearby would later describe the fiery impact of the blast: “I saw an automobile actually coming down out of the air.”

The smoldering wreck lurched to a halt in front of the Romanian Embassy, its windows blown open and entire floor panel gone. A police officer who arrived on the scene remembered welling up with nausea. There was blood and debris everywhere and a human foot in the roadway. A fatally wounded man lay on the pavement; his legs were missing from above the knees.

This was Orlando Letelier, a 44-year-old former Chilean diplomat who had been driving to work at a D.C. think tank along with his colleague, Ronni Moffitt, 25, and her husband, Michael.

Letelier died within minutes. Shrapnel had pierced Ronni Moffitt’s throat, and she drowned in her own blood a half-hour later. Michael, who had been sitting in the back seat, tumbled out largely unscathed. He was beside himself in grief and shock.

“Assassins, fascists!” he exclaimed amid the carnage.

They were victims of a brazen, perhaps unprecedented plot, the target of a foreign regime that had sent agents into the United States to kill Letelier. Here was a case of state-sponsored terrorism in the heart of the American capital. Only in this instance, the state was a close Washington ally in the Cold War.

Letelier was a prominent opponent of the military rule of Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who rose to power in a 1973 army coup that ousted and led to the death of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. Letelier had served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States in Allende’s socialist government, which the CIA spent millions of dollars undermining through covert operations. On the day of the coup, Letelier was arrested and sent, with other ministers of Allende’s government, to a string of concentration camps. For months, he was kept at Dawson Island in the extreme south of Chile near the South Pole. He was released only after concerted international diplomatic pressure.

A trained economist, Letelier eventually won residency in Washington and a post at the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies. He became the most prominent Chilean exile living in the United States — and a magnet for dissent and criticism of both Pinochet’s abuses and the missteps of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

Following Pinochet’s coup, the military government imprisoned former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. Later released, he went into exile in the US where the former Ambassador to the US landed a job as head of the Transnational Institute within the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-of-center think tank. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 12-20-76, p. C7; Irvine, AIM Report, Oct 80, p. 1) An FBI wiretap of December 4, 1975 revealed Letelier had contacted DGI officer Torres Rizo on a recent conference in Mexico. Letelier advised his handler the conference had been productive and the Cubans in attendance had made excellent contributions. Torres Rizo told Letelier he would be in Washington DC in mid-December and he wanted to meet with him and his IPS colleagues. (Irvine, AIM Report, Oct 80, p. 4) In 1977, columnist Jack Anderson identified Cuban Mission to the United Nations (CMUN) officer Julian Torres Rizo as the chief of Havana’s US-based intelligence operations. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 6-9-77, p. VA 25).

On December 17, Letelier arranged to meet Torres Rizo in New York City two days later to receive some packages. FBI wiretaps and Letelier’s own diary showed five contacts between Letelier and Torres Rizo that month. In contrast, Letelier’s diary revealed only one contact with senior intelligence officer Teofilo Acosta Rodriguez during 1975. (Irvine, AIM Report, Oct 80, p. 4). The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) later identified Teofilo Acosta as a senior Cuban intelligence officer. (Valeriani, NBC, 9-1-77). In 1982, DGI defector Gerardo Peraza re-affirmed Acosta’s DGI affiliation (US Senate, 2-26-82)

On September 21, 1976, Letelier died when a bomb placed in his car detonated as he entered Washington D.C.’s Sheridan Circle. Investigators subsequently salvaged Letelier’s attaché case from the debris. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 12-20-76, p. C7; Irvine, AIM Report, Oct 80, p. 1) Secret documents found in the case provided additional details of Letelier’s direct contact with CMUN 1st Secretaries Torres Rizo and Acosta. In this correspondence, Letelier warned his Cuban connections to keep their relations secret, lest it undermine his influence in the US. (Irvine, New York Times, 10-11-80, p. 22; Library of Congress’ 1971 Cuban Dip list, p. 61). In a letter from Beatrice Allende dated May 8, 1975, she told Letelier he would receive a onetime payment of $5000, followed by monthly payments of $1000. She told him the money came from the Chilean Socialist Party in exile. At the time, the exiled party maintained offices in Rome, East Berlin and Havana. US Intelligence sources told investigators Letelier could not have been provided the money without Havana’s approval. After her letter was made public, Beatrice Allende refused to comment to US media inquiries. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 12-20-76, p. C7) After her father’s death, Beatriz Allende had fled Chile and moved to Cuba with her husband. Four years later, apparently suffering from severe depression, she committed suicide. (Andrew, Our Way, p. 516)

On the day of his death, Letelier also carried correspondence from Cuban agent [now Chilean Ambassador to the US]Juan Gabriel Valdes. The September 1976 letter from Valdes to America Department (DA) Officer Emilio Brito thanked him for documents he (Valdes) received from Torres Rizo. Valdes said the documents had been exceptionally useful and he hoped to send Brito some items he had collected. Valdes also told Brito he hoped to travel to Cuba in early 1977. Brito’s assignment at the time was DA subversive operations in the US, including Puerto Rico. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 12-20-76, p. C7; Irvine, AIM Report, Oct 80, p. 1)

Letelier probably carried these documents to prevent the CIA from stealing them. (Anderson & Whitten, Washington Post, 12-20-76, p. C7) His concern was well founded. From 1971-early 1972, six separate burglaries occurred at Chile’s lesser diplomatic facilities in the US. Then, in mid-May 1972, the Chilean Embassy itself was burglarized. The intruders made no effort to conceal their misdeed: Letelier’s office was extensively ransacked, as were those of other senior officials. A subsequent Senate investigation confirmed the US government’s role and revealed the FBI had placed wiretaps on the Chilean Embassy from 1971-1973 at the CIA’s request. (Davis, pp. 93-95) It is unclear who ordered the 1975 wiretaps.

United States Senate – Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism — Committee on the Judiciary, “The Role of Cuba in International Terrorism and Subversion: Intelligence Activities of the DGI,” February 26, 1982.

America Department (DA): The name used by the intelligence wing of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party from 1974 to the late 1980s or early 1990s. The DA was heavily involved in supporting revolutionaries and terrorists, but has since become more focused on political intelligence operations. This service is now called the America Area of the International Department of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC/ID/AA).

Directorate of Intelligence (DI): The foreign intelligence wing of the Ministry of the Interior. Prior to 1989, this service was known as the Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI).

1997-1998: Director, European and North American Division — Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation (cover assignment)

1992-1997: Economic Counselor in charge of economic and trade affairs at the Cuban Embassy in Brazil (cover assignment)

1982 – 1992: Specialist on Cooperation in the Division of Economic International Institutions of the State Committee for Economic Cooperation in Havana (cover assignment)

1981: Project Manager with the ECIMETAL Enterprise (cover assignment)

@1981 – Present day: Entered Cuba’s primary foreign intelligence service, the Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI) as an officer in the Q-2 Department, which conducted operations against Cuban exiles. Following a 1989 restructuring, the DGI was renamed the Directorate of Intelligence (DI).

1980: Graduated from the University of Havana with a degree in Economics

Born in Havana, Cuba, on 10/14/56, Malmierca Díaz is married to Grisell Guadalupe Castano-Rey and has two children. His languages include Spanish, English, French & Portuguese.

Editor’s Note: A “cover assignment” is the purported occupation or purpose of an intelligence officer or agent and is intended to explain one’s duties or presence in an area.

Get ready for another round of “Let’s go do business in Cuba” enthusiasm on Friday. That’s when Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to raise the Stars and Stripes for the ceremonial opening of the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Before you go rushing into a business venture on the island that was the communist outpost in the Cold War, you might want to have a talk with Ross Thompson at Classified Worldwide Consulting, which has an office in West Palm Beach. Thompson, the firm’s managing director, has a few caveats to share.

In particular, Thompson cautions that Cuba’s foreign investment and business laws present six key challenges that Americans need to think through ahead of time. They are:

The Cuban government will own a majority stake in the company. A 49-51 percent split is common, but Havana has required a larger share in some sectors.

Your local workforce will be selected by the Cuban government. This selection may not be based on skill or merit but by seniority or cronyism.

Cuban managers will be appointed to mirror your handpicked managers, especially if your senior leadership includes Cuban exiles. The Cuban managers will ultimately control many decisions, or influence them, when dealing with your majority partner, the Cuban government.

Everything in Cuba is heavily influenced by Cuba’s intelligence service, the DGI. You must be very careful to guard your own corporate proprietary information. [Emphasis added]

Vendors you may work with may be fronts, or “cutouts,” for other foreign intelligence services such as those from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The capture and exchange of corporate confidential information is a lucrative business, so guard your files. [Emphasis added]

Former Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI) officer Enrique García Diaz identified Leda Elvira Peña Hernández as a career DGI officer.

Peña Hernández, the second Cuban Ambassador to Costa Rica, died on June 26. She had served as Ambassador since September 2012. A previous “diplomatic-cover” posting included Counselor at the Cuban Embassy in Italy, which began in September 2002. According to Granma, she was born in Villa Clara on September 14, 1949 and held a Bachelor’s degree in History and a Masters in Social Science. She spoke Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.

García Diaz first met PeñaHernández (“Elvirita”) in January 1979 in what is now called Department M-II (Latin America) of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). At that time, she had served as a member of the “Brazil Desk” in Havana for more than six years.

She was married to fellow M-II officer Javier Martinez Buduen (“Miguel Angel”). The couple had two children. In 1983 he was appointed commercial attaché at the Cuban Embassy in Ecuador. She accompanied him and served in the DGI Centro hidden within the Embassy. They returned to Cuba in 1986 and she became a member of the “Ecuador Desk” at DGI headquarters.

García Diaz observed that she held a reputation as a solid professional, while Buduen was respected as a dedicated worker. The husband-wife team joined the DGI in 1974.

General Juan Velasco Alvarado came to power as part of a junta that overthrew the Peruvian government in October 1968. In July 1973, Velasco’s leftist government established diplomatic relations with Cuba. A declassified Cuban government cable later identified the General as one of its intelligence agents. Velasco remained in power until late August 1975 when he was deposed by General Francisco Morales Bermudez, his prime minister.

Former Dirección General De Inteligencia(DGI) officer Enrique García Diaz served on the “Peru Desk” at DGI headquarters during this period. During an interview, he explained that three other officers also worked the “desk:” Eulalia Sardain (codenamed “Mayra”), René Ceballo Prats (“Ibrahim”) and Ismael Cruz Arce (“Jose Luis”). Two additional DGI officers who worked with García Diaz on Peru issues were Juan Pedro Gonzalez (“Giraldo”) and Jose Francisco Molina Mauri (“Ivan”).

According to media reports, René Ceballo Prats later led Cuba’s Embassy in Nicaragua as chargé d’affaires starting in 2009. He now serves as Cuban Ambassador to Lebanon.

The CIA’s 1983 global directory of Cuban officials provides the names and positions of 21 Cubans posted to Havana’s Embassy in Peru. In a review of these personnel, García Diaz identified the following nine diplomats as Cuban intelligence officers or collaborators.

Counselor Jorge Pollo Garcia (“Osvaldo”). DGI Centro chief. According to Garcia Diaz, Pollo’s espionage career began in 1961 with the Illegal Department. Pollo reportedly served briefly in Japan in 1970 before his reassignment to Chile as the Deputy Centro Chief. Following his subsequent tour in Peru, Pollo became chief of the Southern Cone “desk,” overseeing this region’s spy operations. Several years later, he led the upgrade of Cuban intelligence operations in India from a one-man “pointe” to a full-blown Centro. He may have later served in Bolivia before becoming chief of staff for Jorge Valdés-Saldaña Risquet, a member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party. Media reports later cited Pollo as a Cuban diplomat in Guatemala in the early 2000s.

Eduardo Torres Ravelo. DGI. Open source publications referenced Torres Ravelo as a Cuban diplomat in Chile during the Allende years.

Prensa Latina (PRELA) Correspondent Sergio Medina (“Sergito”).DGI. García Diaz noted that Medina also served in Colombia at one point. The CIA’s 1983 roster listed Medina as one of several PRELA correspondents in Venezuela.

Enrique García Diaz defected in March 1989 while based in Ecuador. According to a March 2, 1994 feature by the Canadian Press (news agency), García Diaz had served with the DGI since 1978, handling Cuban agents in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. (Note: The Canadian Press article is available via Lexis/Nexis).

An intelligence-affiliated “diplomat” – understandably not identified by García Diaz because he served outside the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) – would be the Cuban Military Attaché, Colonel Manuel Bravo Yanez. While not every military attaché is a Case Officer (i.e., spy-handler), they are – at a minimum – overt intelligence collectors reporting to the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR).

Author’s Note: Given my knowledge of Mr. García Diaz, I have no reason to doubt the reliability of his information on this topic. In addition:

The status of DGI code clerk Angel Moriaga Diaz was confirmed by another highly reliable former DGI officer.

Declassified US government reports substantiated the DGI service ofLuis Ismael Cruz Arce. This officer first served at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City around August 1966 before being transferred to the one-diplomat Consulate in Tampico by 1970.

A declassified CIA report from Oct 17, 1969 identified Manuel Martinez Galan as a DGI officer. Author Jonathan Haslam also characterized Martinez as DGI, attributing his information to a London-based Cuban defector. In contrast, in 1972, internationally known newspaper columnist Jack Anderson identified Martinez, then a 1st Secretary in Santiago, as head of the DA’s Chile-based operations. A decade later, the CIA listed Martinez as a 1st Secretary at the Cuban Embassy in Moscow.

After serving as a “soldier, sailor, spy and artist” for many years, Dr. Chip Beck retired from the CIA, U.S. Navy and U.S. State Department in 1993, 1996 and 2010, respectively. Today, he works as a writer, editor, freelance contractor and continues with his art. He has degrees in International Relations, Middle Eastern Studies, Organizational Leadership and Conflict Resolution.

Carlos A. Puentes: Given the confluence of events such as U.S. policies on immigration and pressure to reform on Cuban trade, wouldn’t a first step to both be the liberalization of trade policies and update the Cuban immigration status as defined by the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966? Reduction/normalization on barriers implies a change in relationship vis-à-vis nations and suggests fewer belligerences and as such implies a less hostile environment in Cuba toward its own citizens and a lack of need to open U.S. borders, thus a convergence with stricter immigration controls or entry opportunity in the US.

Answer: If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you already have — the status quo.

In the case of U.S. relations with Cuba, the status quo is not working for either side; it is an unnecessary relic of the Cold War that should (in this writer’s opinion and direct experience with the island) be scrapped.

Fifty-five years of a unilateral trade and travel embargo has kept U.S. influence off the island more than it has isolated Cuba. It should be clear to all but the most obstinate that America’s outdated means and methods did not and will not achieve America’s goals and objectives of a freer or more democratic Cuba.

The U.S. does not need to change its goals and objectives, but the means and methods employed for five decades are counterproductive and need to be jettisoned for positive engagement that works.

During the Cold War, this writer worked against or confronted Cuban Expeditionary Forces or operatives on three continents (Indochina, Africa, Central America). Some of those situations resulted in direct contact under less than diplomatic circumstances.

Subsequently, between 1998-2001, I made five (legal) trips to Cuba to seek information on Americans missing in various geographic areas during the Cold War. Because I had once demonstrated my humanity to some beleaguered Cuban soldiers in a time of war, Havana was open to assisting me — and they did so by opening up old classified files, letting me read the original reports in Spanish, and giving me access to former covert operators for interviews that I was allowed to record on film.

Although I was by then retired (prior to September 11, 2001, after which time I came back into government) and entered Cuba as a freelance journalist, the Cubans knew my background as a U.S. Navy Commander and former intelligence officer. Obviously Cuban intelligence (DGI) was curious as to why I was asking to enter their country. I told them up front that I was (a) not defecting, (b) not spying on them, but (c) I wanted access to classified information that I believed Havana could share without harming Cuba’s own national interests.

Fidel Castro was so afraid of a revolt in Cuba’s most elite paramilitary unit that he ordered his motorcade to avoid driving past its base, his top bodyguard at the time says. Raúl Castro was so depressed that he was going on drunken benders and soiling his pants.

Cuba’s top military hero, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, had been executed by firing squad for drug smuggling. And a longtime member of Fidel’s innermost circle, Interior Minister José Abrantes, was in jail awaiting trial for failing to stop the trafficking.

That summer 25 years ago posed one of the toughest challenges ever for the Castro brothers — to show that their top deputies had trafficked drugs without their consent, and to avert a backlash from other soldiers who believed the Castros were lying.

“That was the drop that overflowed my glass,” said Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, 65, who served 17 years on Fidel’s personal security detail and now lives in Miami. “That he would send to the firing squad a man who was a true hero.”

Ochoa, 59, was Cuba’s top military icon. He was a veteran of campaigns in Angola, Venezuela, Ethiopia and Nicaragua, had won the country’s highest honor, Hero of the Revolution, and sat on the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Nevertheless, he was executed on July 13, 1989, along with three senior officers of the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior (MININT), after a military court convicted them of drug smuggling and treason.

Ochoa was not plotting to overthrow Fidel, as was rumored at the time, said Sánchez, who in 1989 stood at Fidel’s elbow as keeper of the diary of the Cuban leader’s daily activities. Ochoa did not have the troops or the means to carry out a coup, he added.

But evidence presented at their trial showed that Ochoa and the three others who were executed — Antonio de la Guardia, Jorge Martinez and Amado Bruno Padron — had arranged cocaine shipments through Cuba and to the United States for Colombia’s Medellin cartel.

Abrantes, one of Fidel’s oldest and closest aides, a former head of his security detail and a general, was arrested later with six other MININT officers for failing to stop the drug traffic and corruption. He died of a heart attack in 1991 while serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Fidel had approved Abrantes’ involvement in drug trafficking, Sánchez alleged. And Raúl, then minister of defense, had approved Ochoa’s involvement. Military Counter-Intelligence (CIM), which reported directly to Raúl, had to have known of Ochoa’s activities, yet no CIM agent turned up at either trial as defendant or witness.

Just a few blocks from the White House, in the basement of a black Baptist church, the chief of the Cuban Interests Section plotted with former terrorists and members of the communist Workers World Party this past week to convince President Obama to release communist spies and terrorists from American prisons.

Coming in the wake of freed U.S. Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl, in a trade for terrorists arranged by the Obama administration, these possible developments cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The conference dramatized how the far-left “progressives,” operating under the direction of Cuba, have calculated that Obama’s last two or so years in office represent the perfect opportunity for their comrades to leave prison with presidential pardons, clemencies, or commutations, and then return to the “struggle,” or “resistance,” in the streets.

The two-day event, the main focus of the “Five Days for the Cuban Five” campaign, was open to the press, enabling this columnist to attend and film the activities of the hard left as they operated under the watchful eyes of José Ramón Cabañas, Chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., and his agents. About 150 people attended the event.

The Cuban Interests Section functions as Castro’s embassy, in the absence of formal diplomatic relations, and operates as a front for the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI.

Even the Obama administration has conceded that the “Cuban Five” were members of a Castro spy network.

Before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan was Obama’s solicitor general and submitted a legal brief in the case. She noted in the brief that members of the “Cuban five” were affiliated with the Cuban intelligence service and the “Wasp Network,” whose purpose included penetrating U.S. military facilities and transmitting information about the facilities’ operations and layout to Cuba, and infiltrating Cuban-American groups.

The brief noted that three Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR) planes made a scheduled flight over the Florida Straits to search for rafters, and that the flight plans were transmitted to Cuba. “When the planes passed the boundary between Miami and Havana air traffic control, which lies in international airspace, they identified themselves to Havana,” it said. “Within minutes, Cuban fighter jets pursued two of the BTTR planes. The Cuban fighters shot down both planes, killing all four men aboard, three of whom were U.S. citizens. Both planes were in international airspace, heading away from Cuba, when they were shot down. Neither plane had entered Cuban airspace.”

Featured speakers at the “Free the Cuban Five” conference included:

Linda Evans, a Weather Underground terrorist pardoned by President Clinton. •Rafael Cancel Miranda, a Puerto Rican terrorist who opened fire on the House of Representatives in 1954, and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. •Cindy Sheehan, the former anti-Iraq War activist who just ran unsuccessfully for California governor on the “Peace and Freedom” party ticket.

CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — At an airfield in rural Georgia, the U.S. government pays a contractor $6,600 a month for a plane that doesn’t fly.

The plane is a 1960s turboprop with an odd array of antennas on its back end and the name of a Cuban national hero painted on its tail. It can fly, but it doesn’t. Government orders.

“The contract now is a ‘non-fly’ ” contract, said Steve Christopher of Phoenix Air Group, standing next to the plane. “That’s what the customer wants.”

The airplane is called “Aero Martí,” and it is stuck in a kind of federal limbo. After two years of haphazard spending cuts in Washington, it has too little funding to function but too much to die.

The plane was outfitted to fly over the ocean and broadcast an American-run TV station into Cuba. The effort was part of the long-running U.S. campaign to combat communism in Cuba by providing information to the Cuban people uncensored by their government. But Cuban officials jammed the signal almost immediately, and surveys showed that less than 1 percent of Cubans watched. Still, when Congress started making budget cuts, lawmakers refused to kill the plane.

But then they allowed across-the-board “sequestration” cuts. And there was no more money for the fuel and pilots. So the plane sits in storage at taxpayer expense — a monument to the limits of American austerity. In this case, a push to eliminate long-troubled programs collided with old Washington forces: government inertia, intense lobbying and congressional pride.
The result was a stalemate. And a plane left with just enough money to do nothing.

“It’s hard to state how ridiculous it is” that the plane is still costing taxpayers money, said Philip Peters, an official in two Republican administrations and now the president of the Alexandria-based Cuba Research Center. Peters said the plane’s broadcasts had “no audience. They’ve been effectively jammed, ever since their inception. And rather than spend the money on something that benefits the public . . . it’s turned into a test of manhood on Capitol Hill.”

This plane is a last remnant of a long, weird experiment in television broadcasting across the Straits of Florida. The plan was to broadcast uncensored news and commentary on a station named for Cuban patriot José Martí. The hope was that something boundless — American disdain for the communist regime of Fidel and Raúl Castro — could overcome something fixed. Which was the laws of physics. Much of Cuba was simply too far over the horizon to get a strong-enough TV signal from aircraft flying in U.S. airspace.

Still, the effort moved ahead. “I am convinced that TV Martí will succeed,” then-Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-S.C.), a major supporter, said in 1989. “Castro likes to tout his revolutionary credentials,” Hollings said. “But he cannot begin to match the revolutionary potential of television.” As it turned out, he could. The first broadcast of TV Martí was March 27, 1990. It came in clear in Havana for about 20 minutes. Then the American signal — weakened by distance — was jammed by Cuban broadcasts on the same channel.

Editor’s Note: In 1988, longtime television director-writer-editor Jose Rafael Fernandez Brenes jumped ship from a Cuban merchant vessel in Canada. To all appearances, Fernandez was at sea to develop a television program about Cuba’s merchant marine. While his media background was legitimate, Fernandez was also a DGI agent sent to undermine the US government’s establishment of TV Marti. After his faked defection, Fernandez met with his Case Officer in New York City. Afterwards, living under the guise of a refugee, he interviewed with Radio Marti. At the time, Radio Marti was one of Havana’s most pressing foreign policy concerns.

Within months, he held a government job. From 1988 through 1991, Fernandez helped establish and operate TV Marti, the federal entity that broadcasts news and information to Cuba. In March 1990, TV Marti began broadcasting and was surprised to find its signal immediately jammed by Havana. Fernandez had secretly provided Havana with the technical data and frequencies needed to effectively block TV Marti’s signal. The US learned Fernandez’s true identity when he returned to Cuba in 1991 told his story to a Cuban newspaper.

To capitalize upon its espionage success, Cuba’s Communications Ministry invited domestic and foreign journalists to attend a ceremony marking Havana’s jamming of TV Marti. Leftist US journalist Ron Ridenour attended the event and was actually selected to give the order to jam TV Marti. Within minutes of going on the air, Havana had neutralized TV Marti.